Knights
by Daert
Summary: Aaron, cousin of Ranma, begins his quest to become the greatest demon hunter ever. Includes witches, magic girls and miniature giant space hamsters.


Anything-goes demon slaying

Disclaimer: I do not now, nor shall I ever, own the works that are borrowed from to create this fiction. I do own Girai, Maya, Titania, Fluffy, Aaron, and any and all OCs located in this work into perpetuity. There may be some cursing when the characters reach Nerima district, and there will definitely be massive quantities of violence

The fortress was built into the rocky face of the Swiss Alps; it had been there since before the Renaissance and few knew of its existence. Neither banner nor national flag flew from its high turrets, shaped to resemble the crags of the mountains that it was built into, but it was not derelict; within the maze of anterooms and hallways close to a thousand people went on with their lives, forgotten by the majority of the world. These are the protectors, the ones who have forsworn the world to protect the weak; they have been called by many names through their existence: the Nephilim, the Guardians, the Shadow Legion, the rear-guard, and most recently the Knights Templar. The world has changed and the Knights have adapted, but they have continued to defend humanity from the forces of hell and the unsleighe court; the only part of their mission that had changed was that through modern communication they were able to find groups to aid them.

In Africa there were the magi, an ancient order that had all but disappeared; all that remained was a group of elderly priests guarding the Mnganna, a sword that patiently awaited the return of the archangel Gabriel. In North and South America the Order of the Three and the Order of the Manitou strove to keep the Unsleighe from breeching the Shields that protected the mortal world from their predation. In Asia the Knights had made contact with no less than fifty different demon-hunting agencies, magic-user control centers, sidhe alliances, and a group of reformed demons that kept watch over several areas with high-magic pollution. It was this particular area that was inciting one of the largest spousal arguments in the history of the Knights, one that was oddly similar to another happening at the same time on the other side of the world.

"I am _not_ going to let \\Thunk/ you take \\Thunk/ my only son \\Thunk/ on some insane \\Thunk/ training trip!" Maya Saotome, high priestess of the Knights Templar, glared at her quivering wreck of a husband as she aimed the crossbow a few inches higher.

"N...Now my love, c...can't we just talk this over! \\Thunk/ Just please hear me out before you castrate me!" Girai Saotome, knight errant, breathed a sigh of relief as he saw his wife lower the crossbow.

"You have five minutes to convince me not to remove your male prerogative and to allow me to let you take our innocent little boy on some globe-trotting trip to make him some kind of killing machine!" a cloud of golden ki erupted in an aura about her, fizzing and crackling as it incinerated some rather unfortunate bugs that had been flying too close.

"It is a matter of family honour, my dearest; both my brother and I swore to make our children the greatest warriors on earth. We swore this on the grave of the master who trained us. Besides, Aaron is an intelligent lad, he's only six and already he figured out why Brother Dashi keeps having those strange outbreaks of hives; it seems that the dear Brother is a Halvirel"

"So it is a matter of honour then... I shall let you take him, but only for ten years. At the end of those ten years, if he is not able to show that he has surpassed your combat ability, you must commit seppuku After confessing to the entire world that you are the worst father in existence and that you have regularly engaged in romantic liaisons outside of your own species!" unbeknownst to her; more than twelve females of different humanoid species, all with young children, started sneezing uncontrollably.

_Outskirts of London, two weeks later…_

Girai smiled as he saw his son practicing some of the basic katas of the family style, a style that, unlike the other styles of anything goes, required the user to be armed and armored. In this case, the weapons used by the young demon slayer were a pair of wooden training swords, one fashioned after a western falchion and the other after an eastern katana. The armor that he wore was a chain shirt with white leather gloves and pauldrons, a gray-green tunic, and baggy blue pants with metal rings sewn into the fabric.

Girai's peaceful contemplation was abruptly shattered by a young girl's scream, as she was bodily thrown into him, sending him flying into the trunk of a nearby oak tree.

"DAD!" Aaron turned towards where the girl had come flying from and almost pissed himself in fright; the creature emerging from the dark alleyway was loathsome beyond compare.

It was humanoid in that it had two arms, two legs, ECT; but that was where the similarities ended. Its face was a distorted parody; random patches of hair grew from random mounds of decaying flesh, across its scaled body random shapes appeared and vanished, human faces mouthing silent, tortured screams before being reabsorbed.

"Dad? Dad? So the demon hunter I smelled is your father, whelp?" the chaos demon sneered at him, " I wonder what his reaction will be to a son that is no longer human?"

Aaron screamed in fear and pain as a bolt of reddish-black energy slammed into him. He could feel the chaos magic burning through him like fire, changing his very being. Suddenly, he felt a soothing haze covering him, issuing from the amulet his mother had given him.

Flashback 

"Aaron, my beloved child; I love you with all of my being. If I could, I would go with you, but my duties prevent me from doing so. I… I want you to have this" Maya said, removing a small amulet from around her neck, "Its an artifact that was created by my ancestor, the archangel Uriel, as a symbol of his love for our family. It will allow you to call upon the power of your bloodline, but only when it is dire for you to do so."

_Aaron looked from the amulet to the crying face of his mother and began weeping in earnest, burying his face in his mother's robes._

End Flashback 

The chaos demon looked on in confusion as his spell was changed. He had intended to spook the kid by turning him into a girl for all of two minutes, but the spell was being changed by something. With a flash, the mist that had replaced the fire of his spell dispersed, revealing the child's altered form.

Where once was a human six-year old now stood a young angel, his golden wings folded about him like a robe. His hair had gone from midnight-black to an opalescent white, his skin was almost silver in color, his eyes were closed, and his face had a look of pure serenity on it. The demon decided to use the boy's seeming slumber to escape, running up to the young girl that was sprawled across Girai's body and shaking her awake.

"What is it Fluffy? I need more sleep." The girl rolled over and fell off of Girai's prone form. "The Hell? Who the fuck is this, Fluffy? And why was I sleeping on him?"

"I'm sorry, Titania, but that last spell you cast blew you clean out of the alley and into this gentleman here. Ummm… I also seem to have changed his son into an angel. Can we please flee before he decides to wake up and make me very dead?"

Aaron shook his head to clear out some of the cobwebs and immediately realized that something was wrong. His body felt different, all of the muscles in his back were sore, feeling like they had been twisted inside his body. He tried to take a step forward and overbalanced, pulled backwards by a weight he hadn't felt before. Turning his head, he saw what was causing the weight and screamed!

To be continued…

(A/N: a Halvirel is a human with sidhe ancestors, this magical bloodline typically includes an allergic reaction to cold iron)

(A/N: a form of ritual suicide used by the Japanese clear up to WWII, the intent was that if a member of a family dishonoured themselves horrifically then they could commit seppuku to spare the honour of the rest of the family. May or may not be used by some of the more traditionalist families in the present day.)

Please read and review, and please try to give useful advice when you do, including plot ideas.


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